Comments on: The BBC could save local media

By: Steve Bowbrick

Steve Bowbrick — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:51:17 +0000

Amen, Monique. Did you read Vic Keegan's rather angry article on this topic in last week's Guardian. Very good stuff. He's essentially in agreement with the premise that the BBC could have actually boosted local media provision and especially at the laggard outlets who haven't touched video yet. What a shame.

By: Monique Potts

Monique Potts — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:53:03 +0000

I’m sorry to hear this has been knocked back – but not surprised really. It seems to be quite difficult for the BBC to innovate in a number of new media spaces (education, local etc) without being seen as being anti-competitive or compromising commercial media production.

I think this creates a real bind for the BBC in trying to innovate and promote new models of media production.

I agree that providing free feeds would be a
very good way to feed into and provide resources to local media producers. But it’s also important to acknowledge that most of these local media producers are not in a position to be innovative in this space, where the BBC is.

I know how much work is involved in producing these sort of proposals and to me it seems like a great loss of public value to just have to bin it.

By: Steve Bowbrick

Steve Bowbrick — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:17:29 +0000

OK wiseguy. I fixed the post. Thanks for the grammar check :->

By: Nick Reynolds (BBC)

Nick Reynolds (BBC) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:43:43 +0000

Shouldn’t your last sentence read “i’d like to think not” i.e. you would hope he wouldn’t get such a frosty reception?

Good post though.

By: Deirdre Molloy

Deirdre Molloy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:44:54 +0000

Thank you for this post Steve. When you touched on “sharing facilities and content” it reminded me a lot of point 3. from a recent post by Umair Haque on his Harvard Business blog where he counterpoints the old business rule of ‘maximising destructiveness’ with a new approach of getting constructive.

Of course I’m not comparing the BBC to the Detroit auto industry that Haque is focusing on – they’re entirely different entities, and the BBC is in a much better position methinks.

Maybe the larger point it that rather than any co-operation being driven by sheer necessity in the face of local media’s struggles and the deepening of the recession (moves to share resources among the metropolitan media are already afoot), co-operation between the BBC and local players driven by more purposeful logic would seem to be more dynamic, sustainable and beneficial to all involved… but that would be a big change for all parties concerned.